Old Red Nose is back

I’d like to begin this entry by offer­ing up an undoubtedly offens­ive pic­ture of an alco­holic. Why offens­ive? Well, because the image to the right of this text por­trays a clas­sic ste­reo­type of such a per­son and, as such, is neither big, nor clever, nor intrins­ic­ally funny. But in this case I think the pic­ture is allow­able because, if you look care­fully, the inebri­ated gen­tle­man is rais­ing his fin­gers on either side of him to make a pair of air-drawn quo­ta­tion marks, as if to say, “Fluh­hrrr, feck­ing arse, whisky, bol­locks to the lot of yer, yer feckin’ feck­ers”. Or, to trans­late his almost unin­tel­li­gible grunt­ing into sens­ible Eng­lish, “Yes, I may be a pissed old fart, but that’s only because I am a mere ‘ste­reo­type’ of an alco­holic. Comprendez?”

Stay with me here, because all will become clear in a moment, I promise.

One of the other ste­reo­types about alco­hol­ics such as the gen­tle­men in the pho­to­graph is that they have red noses. Red eyes too, but almost cer­tainly red noses. If you look care­fully, I’m sure you can spot our friendly inebriate’s red nose. There it is. Right in the middle of his face, where noses are usu­ally situ­ated. Now I’m sure there’s some good med­ical reason for the red nose phe­nomenon, but I don’t know what it is, so I’m pre­sum­ing that the effect is caused by the afore­men­tioned alcoholic’s head slump­ing for­ward into the large glass of red wine they have been drink­ing, then stay­ing there all night and slowly dying the pro­trud­ing pro­bos­cis into a red­dish hue. Probably.

Keep listen­ing, for the fol­low­ing inform­a­tion is important.

On no account what­so­ever should alco­hol­ics with red noses be con­fused with clowns. Yes, it’s true, clowns do have red noses, but clowns are scary and only allegedly funny. Whereas — and this is a sweep­ing and, again, highly offens­ive gen­er­al­isa­tion — alco­hol­ics are not so scary but can be highly amus­ing. Though one shouldn’t laugh at them really, because they have obvi­ously got a ser­i­ous prob­lem. Mind you, clowns have a prob­lem too, because they’re evil. That’s just my per­sonal hang-up about clowns, though. Not funny. Evil. Evil clowns, come to murder you with an axe in the middle of the night and steal your pet gold­fish. Or some­thing. Oh dear, this is all going hor­ribly wrong, I can sense it.

In fact, I’m going to quickly issue a dis­claimer here — drunk people who have enjoyed a night of social bon­homie are highly amus­ing (if you are drunk too), but alco­hol­ics are not. Not amus­ing. No. For­get everything I said pre­vi­ously, and just book me that one way chara­banc to hell. Thank you.

Right, we’re get­ting to the really import­ant stuff now. Pay attention.

Neither alco­hol­ics or clowns are to be con­fused with the entire pop­u­la­tion of this fine nation we call the United King­dom. Got that? It’s an easy mis­take to make, how­ever, because every year — or is it every two years? I for­get, and time flies when you’re fail­ing to laugh at another sod­ding attempt at a com­edy sketch writ­ten by Richard ‘Upper Middle Class Luv­vie Twat’ Curtis — the entire pop­u­la­tion of this coun­try, its sur­round­ing islands and far­flung for­eign out­posts, don red noses in order to cel­eb­rate a fun­drais­ing occa­sion called Comic Relief. This entails going back­stage at vari­ous pro­vin­cial theatre ven­ues up and down this green and pleas­ant land to give relief (oral or oth­er­wise) to stand-up com­ics such as Jim Dav­id­son or Bern­ard Man­ning. Not Les Dawson, though, because Les is dead. And it would be very wrong to bestow relief upon a dead stand-up comic. Very wrong indeed. I mean, there would be rigamortis and everything else to con­sider. Oh, and not Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bear either, because Roger is a vent­ri­lo­quist and there­fore does not count as a stand-up comic, and Nookie Bear is a pup­pet who does not really feel any great bene­fit (sexual or oth­er­wise) from receiv­ing comic relief (oral or otherwise).

This year’s Red Nose Day for Comic Relief takes place on Fri­day 16 March, and that — to explain the mat­ter for any passing ali­ens who might be vis­it­ing — is why every­one will be wear­ing little plastic red noses and sit­ting semi-clothed in baths brim­ming over with baked beans. It’s not because we’re alco­hol­ics or clowns. And it’s not, des­pite what I claimed in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, because we want to get up close and far too per­sonal with Jim ‘Offens­ive Racist Fuck­wit’ Dav­id­son. No. It’s because, in our heart of hearts, we like to laugh and we like to do a lot of good work for char­ity. Or “char­idee”, as Sir Cliff Richard would have it.

Are you still here? Marvellous.

Blog­gers — those strange people who write online journal type linky things filled with non­sensical tosh about their life and their thoughts and their sexual per­ver­sions and their kit­tens (though emphat­ic­ally not sexual per­ver­sions with kit­tens) — like doing a lot of good work for char­ity too. But they don’t like to talk about it. Plus, they’re shy and retir­ing creatures — no no no, they are, stop guf­faw­ing at the back — and sit­ting in a bathful of Heinz’s 57 vari­et­ies of baked bean on Red Nose Day does not fill them with the same sense of joy as your aver­age wacky, zany and thor­oughly annoy­ing indi­vidual wear­ing a lurid shirt and shout­ing “I’m mad, me!” in order to raise money for good causes.

Recog­nising the ter­rible social inad­equa­cies that beset these blog­ging blog­gers of blog­gery when it comes to national occa­sions such as Comic Relief, one of their esteemed fra­tern­ity — a par­tic­u­larly Troubled Diva called Mike, who is not to be con­fused with the equally troubled diva that is Shir­ley Bas­sey and her alleged addic­tion to pre­scrip­tion cough linc­tus, has come up with a splen­did idea. His splen­did idea is that we, you and us — UK blog­gers one and all — should put together some of our finest, most wit­ti­est, most fun­ni­est and most humorousest blog entries, and then make them sit in a bath of baked beans for a week whilst laugh­ing uproari­ously because it’s so com­ple­telly and utterly crazy but it’s all for char­ity, so that’s okay then, yes, really it is.

Oh no, that’s not right. Hang on.

No, Mike’s idea is that these chuckle­some blog entries, guar­an­teed to induce fits of frivolity across the nation and pos­sibly even the entire known world, should be com­piled into a book! In just a week! In just seven days! In just 168 hours! The book will be called Shaggy Blog Stor­ies: a col­lec­tion of amus­ing tales from the UK blo­go­sphere and oh gosh, it’ll make you laugh. We hope. It’ll make you cry. Oh no, no — it won’t make you cry, except with mirth. And It’ll make you giggle until you wet your­self, par­tic­u­larly if you’re one of those afore­men­tioned alco­hol­ics whose troub­ling addic­tion to the con­tents of that brown paper bag you bought from Thresh­ers has become so bad that you’ve lost con­trol of your blad­der and fallen foul of the per­ils of incontinence

I know what you’re won­der­ing, though. You’re won­der­ing — indeed, you’re prob­ably ask­ing aloud at this very moment — “Just how can a book fea­tur­ing so many dif­fer­ent blog­gers be put together in only a week? A week? It’s crazy! It’s mad­ness! It’s another exclam­a­tion that I can’t quite think of!” Well, that’s the best part of this fant­astic wheeze, because Mike — friend of the stars and of numer­ous blog­ging types — has man­aged to enlist the ser­vices of his best pal Lulu, aging Scot­tish pop pixie last seen ogling mem­bers of Take That in a frankly dis­turb­ing way for a woman of her advan­cing years, to carry out this feat of light­ning fast self-publishing. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is an aston­ish­ing coup, the likes of which simply makes you want to shout. Shout shout shout shout shout. Every­body shout now. Come on and shout now. Or don’t. Just sit quietly, because I’ve nearly finished.

So that’s it. A book of tat­ti­fil­ari­ous and hil­ari­ous blog entries from the creme de la creme of UK blog­gery. In a week. Which will then be avail­able for you to pur­chase in order to cheer up depressed friends and rel­at­ives, in the pro­cess mak­ing money for those people less for­tu­nate than ourselves. Like the alco­holic gen­tle­man in the pic­ture, who prom­ises not to spend it on numer­ous bottles of methyl­ated spir­its. Though I’m not sure he should be trus­ted, frankly.

I have expounded at length, and now I am exhausted. Tired. Spent. As spent as Jim Dav­id­son will be next Fri­day, on Red Nose Day itself, hav­ing received his Comic Relief. For fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion, details and words that make sense, get your­self over to Troubled Diva. Take part. Do your bit. Laugh. Because if you laugh then the world laughs with you; cry and you get accused of spoil­ing the jovial atmo­sphere. But most of all, remem­ber that we’re doing it for the kids and the poor people who can’t even afford to have a blog of their own, the sad wretches. And we’re doing it because they’re worth it. Maybe.

Apo­logy: the Shaggy Blog Stor­ies endeav­our is only open to blog­gers. Nor­mal people need not apply. Oh, and you have to be from the UK. So once again, nor­mal people need not apply.

Another apo­logy: I have real­ised, with a grow­ing sense of alarm, that I am prob­ably going to have to delve as far back as 2003 in my archives in order to find a suit­able post for this col­lec­tion that could even be con­sidered remotely ‘funny’. Oh dear. Tra­gic Relief next year, any­one? Any­one? Hello?